


The First Hours

by glorious_spoon



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Investigations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8173822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: In the first hours after Jack's shooting, Peggy and Daniel head up the investigation. For the 'hospital' square on my h/c bingo card.





	

“We should,” Peggy mumbles against Daniel’s lips, unable to quite pull herself away. “We should call Jack.”

Daniel drops his head back with a groan. There’s a flush high in his cheeks and his hair is mussed; it’s an attractive look on him, and one she’d like to see a lot more of. First things first, though. “Really? _Now?”_

“Yes, now. Unless you want him walking in here in twenty minutes or so. He’s supposed to be taking me to the airport.”

He glances up at that, something soft and almost shy in his expression. “You’re staying out here, then?”

“No, I thought I’d snog you silly and then traipse back to New York,” Peggy says tartly. “Yes, of course I’m staying. Particularly since you’ve just arrested half of your office, I’d say you need all the help you can get.”

She’s afraid, in the moment after she says it, that Daniel might take it the wrong way, but he just laughs quietly and reaches for the phone.

* * *

It’s quite some time later, and Daniel’s shirt is nearly all the way unbuttoned, when the phone rings. Daniel smothers a groan in the curve of her neck. “I’m not answering that.”

“Hmm,” Peggy murmurs, intelligently.

The phone rings again.

“I mean it,” Daniel mumbles. His warm hands are curved around her ribs, just below her breasts, and she feels giddy and skin-drunk, and the damn phone is _still ringing._

“It might be important,” she says reluctantly. They wouldn’t be calling the office on a Saturday if it wasn’t. Probably.

“Damn it,” Daniel mutters, sounding flatteringly annoyed, and leans forward to pick up the receiver without dislodging Peggy from his lap. “Sousa. What is it?”

A silence, then he straightens up, goes suddenly tense in a way that sends a needle of ice through the pit of her stomach. “What? _When?_ ” Another pause. “Yeah. Yeah, Carter is with me. We’re on our way.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye. Peggy slides off his lap, feeling cold in a way that has nothing to do with the sudden absence of his body heat. “What happened?”

Daniel is rapidly buttoning his shirt up; when he looks up at her, his face is white under his tan. “Jack’s been shot. At his hotel. He’s—it’s bad, Peggy.”

There’s a long, frozen, horrible silence, and then Peggy straightens her dress and reaches for her bag; her handgun is in there, and she has a feeling she’ll be needing it.

“Well,” she says briskly, choking back the cold lump at the back of her throat with the ease of long practice. “We’d best be going, then.”

* * *

The ambulance has cleared away by the time they get to the hotel, which is crawling with somber, black-suited agents and agitated cops in uniform. A few of them look askance at Peggy in her traveling suit and fashionable pumps, but she doesn’t stop for questions, just flashes her badge and stalks past them with Daniel trailing in her wake. It’s only when they make it to the stairs that she slows at all, out of consideration for his missing leg. There’s a barricade up in front of the lift, and a man in a grimy jumpsuit shining a torch through the doors. “Is the lift shut down, then?”

“Disabled,” Daniel says shortly, letting the stairwell door swing shut behind them. It’s stifling and filthy in the here; clearly, it wasn’t intended for guests. “Whoever did this wasn’t taking any chances.”

“That’s an awful lot of insurance for one agent.” Jack didn’t even make it out of his room, at least not on foot. And it’s… odd. Jack Thompson is a competent agent and he can look after himself in a fight, but he’s not an ubermensch. That degree of precaution seems like overkill. “Do we know what they were after?”

“No.” Daniel is slightly out of breath; stairs aren’t easy for him, but she doesn’t slow and he doesn’t ask her to. “Coulda been almost anything. Or nothing. He’s not exactly short on enemies.”

“Well, he does have quite the winning personality. But given the elaborate preparation, I suspect that if it was meant to be an assassination, he’d be dead.”

“You think it was a warning?” Daniel asks, mercifully not pointing out that Jack might still die. Might be dead already in the back of the ambulance, for all they know; Peggy is refusing to contemplate it, and she suspects that Daniel is as well.

“Perhaps.” They’re at the third floor, finally; she shoulders the door open, holds it for Daniel. “Consider the timing. The attacker had to know he’d be found almost immediately.”

“Doesn’t give him much of an escape window.”

“My thoughts exactly. We’ll need to get a statement from the desk clerks; one of them might have seen something.” There’s a pair of uniforms on the door to Jack’s room, but they let them through with barely a quibble after Peggy shows them her badge and a ferocious glare.

Bloodstains on the pale carpet, a rumpled bed with a suitcase open upon it. There’s nothing remarkable here; it’s just a hotel room, like any other hotel room. With Jack’s blood still soaking into the carpet. It looks like he bled quite a lot, and there are gory fingerprints, carpet fibers pulled loose, as though he tried to drag himself—

She spins away on her heel to survey the rest of the room. The suitcase, she decides, has clearly been rifled through. “Daniel, someone’s been through his luggage. Does it look as though anything was taken?”

Daniel sits down on the mattress and leans his crutch against it to free up his arm, pulling the suitcase toward him. “Nothing obvious,” he says after a moment of sifting through folded shirts and trousers and underthings. “He probably had his wallet on him. I don’t know if he was carrying any files, though. There’s nothing in here.”

“Well, we shall ask him when he wakes up.”

Daniel nods, mutely. His eyes have wandered back to the bloodstains, his face drawn, but at least he doesn’t say, ‘ _If_ he wakes up.’ She already knows that they’re both thinking it.

Peggy sits down beside him and takes his hand; he leans slightly against her shoulder. There’s a weary intimacy to the gesture that’s a far cry from the giddy urgency of earlier. It makes her heart clench, but she just tangles their fingers together and leans back against him. “We’ll find them,” she says quietly, willing herself to believe it. “Jack will be fine. He’s too pigheaded to die.”

“Yeah,” Daniel sighs. He glances at the two uniforms at the door and lowers his voice. “One of us should get to the hospital.”

Peggy follows his gaze. The two policemen are young, fresh-faced, and not remotely ominous at first glance, but as she pointed out earlier (what seems like a lifetime ago), Daniel has just arrested half of his staff, and neither of them know for sure how deep Vernon Masters’ conspiracy goes. “You’re right. I’ll go.”

He opens his mouth—she’s not sure if he intends to protest—and she adds quickly, “You’ll get more cooperation out of this lot than I will.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“It’ll be fine. I’ll stop by the bakery for some biscuits, charm the nurses into letting me stay in the room.”

“Just tell them you’re his girl,” Daniel says, a weak flicker of humor in his voice. “They’ll let you in.”

“Ugh, what a ghastly notion,” she retorts, without much real venom. She’ll pretend to be sweet on Jack if it’ll get her access to his room; for that matter, she suspects that Daniel would as well if there was any chance _that_ might work. She hesitates, then leans over to peck Daniel on the cheek. “Be careful, please.”

“You too,” he says seriously, squeezing her hand and then releasing it to let her stand.

“Oh, you know me.”

“Yeah,” Daniel says, on a breath of laughter. “Exactly.”

* * *

In the end, she doesn’t have to pretend anything. Jack is still in surgery when she gets to hospital, so she occupies herself for the better part of two hours scoping out the perimeter, making note of nearby rooftops that offer themselves as potential sniper perches, considering the choke points of stairwells and narrow hallways. Fretting, mostly. She’s almost hoping to find Leviathan agents poking around, if only because it would afford her an opportunity to hit someone.

No such luck, alas.

Eventually, she settles herself on a hard chair, the one with the best line-of-sight on the operating room door, far enough from the two patrolmen still on-duty that neither of them is tempted to engage her in conversation, but close enough to intercept should one of them make an untoward move. Someone who hasn’t had the sort of month she’s had would probably consider that paranoia.

Neither of them makes a move. The younger of the two, a boy who doesn’t even look as though he was old enough to fight in the war, gives her a hopeful smile that sags into nothing when she meets it with a flat stare.

The minutes tick by.

It occurs to her, eventually, that someone ought to notify Jack’s family. Quick on the heels of that thought is the realization that she doesn’t actually _know_ if Jack has family, or how to get in touch with them if he does. He’s not married, she knows that much, but parents, siblings, a sweetheart—

Probably not that last one, all things considered. Romance is a weakness she can’t see him indulging, particularly given what she’s suspected for some time about his proclivities. Jack avoids attachments that might be used against him, probably because he’s had too much practice on the other end of that sort of manipulation.

Parents are a possibility. Rose will know. She’ll call the office straightaway.

As soon as Jack is out of surgery, that is.

It seems like hours later when the door finally swings open and the doctor steps out, digging in his pockets for a cigarette. He surveys the hallway, empty but for the three of them, without saying a word, and Peggy is on her feet before she makes a conscious decision to move. “How is he?”

“He’ll make it,” the doctor says, lighting his cigarette and taking a long drag. If he notices the way Peggy’s bones have all suddenly gone loose with relief, he doesn’t mention it. “Smoke? You look like you could use it, darlin’.”

“No, thank you.” She pushes her hair out of her face and tries to summon something in the way of composure. “May I see him?”

“He’s still doped to the gills, he won’t—” the man pauses, takes a long look at her, and something softens in his face. “Of course you can, sweetheart. I’ll have one of the nurses show you in just a minute. I just need to talk to these officers first.”

 _These officers._ Of course. Peggy forces a smile, and waits until his back is turned to slip away down the hallway.

She’s more familiar with this particular hospital than she’d like, and could probably find the patient recovery rooms blindfolded even if she hadn’t scoped out the entire place earlier. The first door she tries has a portly middle-aged man snoring in the single bed; the second is empty.

The third room is Jack’s. He’s in the bed closest to the window; the other is unoccupied. Peggy slips inside and shuts the door silently, stepping lightly as she approaches, although it’s probably an unnecessary precaution; the anesthesia isn’t likely to wear off anytime soon.

His face is chalk-white, his blond hair coming loose from its careful side-part and falling messily across his forehead. His chest is swathed in bandages, rising and falling so slightly that Peggy gives into the temptation to press her fingers to his throat and check for a pulse. It’s there, faint but steady.

“You gave us a fright, you know,” she says out loud, taking one of his cool hands in both of hers and chafing it gently. There’s still blood under his fingernails. “I’m utterly furious with you, and I expect Daniel is as well.”

If Jack was awake, he’d have some snide, clever retort for that. He looks younger like this, painfully fragile without his habitual veneer of polish and bluster.

“I mean it,” Peggy says. “I was having a perfectly lovely day until this happened. And given that I was able to get in here without so much as a by-your-leave, I suspect we’re going to have to post a guard on the door. We’re already short of trustworthy agents.” She sniffs. “You’re nothing but trouble.”

She’s squeezing his fingers much too hard. With an effort, she forces herself release them and begins to stand.

Jack’s hand twitches weakly against the bedsheets.

Peggy freezes. “Jack?”

He groans, low in the back of his throat. His eyes flutter open. For a moment, he looks utterly dazed, and then finally, finally, he turns his head and manages to focus on her.

“Carter?” he asks thickly. “What—where am I?”

“You’re in hospital,” she says shortly. “You were shot.”

“You were yelling at me,” he mumbles.

“I most certainly was not.”

“Hmm.” His eyes drift shut. “Sure… sounded like...yellin’...”

“Jack.” She grips his shoulder, but doesn’t dare shake it, not with his injuries. “Jack!”

“Go ‘way. ‘M sleepin’.”

“Did you see who shot you?”

“He said… ” Jack mumbles. His eyes blink open for a moment, a crease forming between his brows, like he’s trying very hard—and without much success—to concentrate. “He said… that I… shouldn’t’ve taken ‘em...”

“Taken what? Jack, what did you have with you? We didn’t find anything.”

His eyes are sliding shut again, though, and this time she can’t rouse him. A bolt of panic shoots through her chest, but she has the presence of mind to check his pulse again before she does something drastic, like start weeping all over him or screaming for the nurses. It’s still there, still steady. He’s just, in the doctor’s colorful language, doped to the gills. More than likely, he won’t even remember this conversation when he does wake up.

“You aggravating man,” she says to his slack and unresponsive face. “I intend to make you pay for this.”

And then—only because he’s not awake to mock her for it—she leans over and drops a brief, dry kiss on his cheek.

* * *

She’s nearly caught coming out of Jack’s room, but fortunately it’s the same doctor as before, and a wadded up handkerchief and a few theatrical sniffles are enough to assuage any suspicions he might have.

Really, she _will_ have to post a guard. Dottie could waltz right through here with barely a wink.

For the moment, though, she locates a phone at the nurses’ station and rings the hotel where Jack was staying. She’s gambling on Daniel still being there, and he is; when he picks up the receiver he’s out of breath like he ran all the way down the three flights of stairs, and there’s a note of dread in the way he says her name.

“He’ll live,” Peggy says straightaway, and on the other end of the line she can hear Daniel breathe out a slow, shaky breath.

“Looks like you were right. Son of a bitch is too stubborn to die.”

“Quite. Daniel, did you find anything else of note? Jack couldn’t tell me much.”

“Nah, he covered his tracks pretty well. Desk clerk gave us a rough description, but it’s not much to go on. You talked to him?”

“Only briefly. He’s heavily sedated.”

“Okay,” Daniel says, and sighs. She can just picture him pinching the bridge of his nose in concentration, like he’s trying to pluck the answers directly out of his skull. “Okay. I’m about done here. I’m gonna head back to the office. We got a plate number on his car from one of the bellhops, we’re trying to track that down now.”

“Send Rose over to me, if she’s still there,” Peggy says. “This place is a security nightmare, I want someone trustworthy posted at his room. And—someone should notify his family.”

“Will do,” Daniel says, and then hesitates on the line for a long moment, like he’s not quite sure how to end the call, or if he even wants to. “Peggy…”

“I’ll see you back at the office,” Peggy says, taking pity on him, and hangs up the phone. Anything more he has to say is better said in person, anyway.

* * *

Rose arrives forty-five minutes later, with a complicated-looking knitting project the size of a small circus tent, a loaded handgun, and—better still—news.

“We found the car parked in a back lot at LAX, the boys in the lab are having a look at it now,” she says in an exaggerated whisper, and peers through the window at Jack’s slumbering form. “How is he?”

“Drugged,” Peggy says. “Did they find anything in the car?”

“Not yet. Or at least, not that I know of. Chief Sousa shoved me into the first cab out of there. Are you okay, Peg?”

“Marvelous,” Peggy says dryly. “They say he should be out of danger, but I’m concerned that someone might come back and try to finish the job. Do keep a sharp eye out, will you?”

Rose pats her cheek with one soft hand, expression knowing. “I will. You’d better get back to the office, I think the Chief is about ready to start tearing his hair out. I told the cab to wait for you.”

“You are an angel, Rose.”

Rose beams. “I know. Now shoo.”

* * *

Daniel is not precisely tearing his hair out, but she suspects, watching him gesture angrily at Samberly through the lab window, that he’s not very far off. Something on a table is emitting purple smoke, and Samberly is leaning over it, looking three parts defiant and one part anxious.

“...a very delicate procedure,” he’s saying, as Peggy pushes the door open. “If you can show me one single other person in this building who can manage to—”

“I don’t need to hear about how complicated the process is, Samberly,” Daniel retorts, rather louder than he usually speaks. “I need _answers._ ”

“Daniel,” Peggy says quietly. “I’m sure that Doctor Samberly is working with all possible speed.”

 _“Thank_ you,” Samberly says. “Now, as I was saying—”

“—and I’m sure he will notify us as soon as he’s discovered anything useful,” she adds, hastily.

Samberly’s mouth snaps shut. She takes advantage of his distraction to steer Daniel out of the room. As the door swings shut behind them, he rubs the back of his neck, looking somewhat abashed.

“I guess I was a little hard on him,” he says. “I did call him in on a Saturday.”

“He’s employed by a shadowy government intelligence agency; he ought to expect to work a few Saturdays. Particularly when the agency chief winds up shot in his own hotel room.”

Daniel manages a bit of a smile at that. “Jack’s really okay?”

“He will be,” Peggy says firmly. “What have you found?”

“Well, he dumped the car at the airport. We’ve got guys combing the place, but I’m thinking he caught a private plane. Could be halfway to Russia by now.”

“And the car?”

“Samberly’s on it. He seems to think he has a technique that will isolate specific chemical traces … anyway, I’ve also got the rest of ‘em going over it with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing so far. Clean as the day it came off the line. Cleaner.”

Peggy sighs. “Well, we already knew they were thorough.”

“Yeah.” Daniel shifts his weight, pushes his knuckles briefly into his left thigh like it pains him. The gesture is automatic, unthinking; she’s seen him do it a dozen times after prolonged physical exertion, and never mentioned it. Even now, she doesn’t think he’d appreciate it. “What I still don’t get is—why? It was a risky move, hitting him in the hotel like that. Why go to all that trouble when they coulda just sniped him from across the street?”

She grimaces at that unpleasant line of thinking, but of course he’s perfectly right. “It isn’t Leviathan’s style, is it? Or the Council’s, for that matter.”

“You thinking a freelancer?”

“Perhaps.” She’s thinking, actually, of the M. Carter file Jack threatened her with, two weeks and a lifetime ago. The misdeeds summarized therein weren’t hers, but she’s familiar enough with that sort of thing to suspect that there’s at least a grain of truth to them. Vernon Masters was far too thorough to simply invent blackmail material out of thin air; simpler by far to pin her name on someone else’s crimes. Someone who would certainly have an incentive to make sure that file—and anyone who’s seen it—disappeared for good.

The last she knew, Masters had the file. If Jack took it with him, that would explain—well, a great deal.

Before she can say anything to Daniel, though, one of the junior agents, a red-headed young man she doesn’t recognize, ducks around the corner and says, “Boss, you better come quick. We just got a call from the boys at the airport. They found a passport for our guy.”

* * *

It was a maid who found the passport, actually, saw it drop out of the pocket of a nervous-looking businessman as he was boarding his flight. A private plane, like Daniel thought. They didn’t manage to stop it taking off, and Jack’s would-be assassin is probably well over international waters by now.

Still, a passport will have a picture, and at least that’s a place to start.

“—and I thought it was funny, you know,” she’s telling the officer when Peggy and Daniel approach, in a broad Boston accent. “I mean, I called him back and all, and he turned around— I know he musta heard me. I was just gonna turn it in—I mean, who just _leaves_ their passport, you know? But then that fella over there—” she points vaguely at a pair of police officers a few yards away, “—he said that they was looking for a fugitive or somethin’, so I thought I should tell him.”

“And we’re very glad you did,” Peggy interjects smoothly. “Could you describe the man you saw?”

“I mean, he was cute,” the girl says. “Tall, you know? He was in a pretty big hurry, I didn’t get a good look at his face.”

Peggy smiles tightly at her. “Thank you. That’s very useful.”

“Peggy, why don’t you—” Daniel says quietly, with a nod toward the officers, who appear more interested, at the moment, in ogling the legs of a pretty PanAm stewardess than in any serious investigative work. “Take a look at the passport. I’ll handle this.”

She stomps down on an irrational impulse to argue—he’s right, he’s the better choice for taking a witness statement, especially right now, with her nerves and her temper both on edge—nods, and makes her way over to the officers, leaving Daniel behind to talk to the girl.

“What have we got?” she asks briskly.

“Uh, miss,” says one of the officers. “You shouldn’t—”

Peggy flashes her badge, along with another tight smile. “Agent, actually. What have we got?”

He blushes a dull red. “Uh, well, Ed here has it—”

“Well?” She turns to face the other officer, who is—oh, for heaven’s sake—digging in his pocket. “In your trousers, really?” she asks, as he fishes out the passport and hands it over to her. “Did you get your badge out of a cereal box? Haven’t you ever heard of proper investigative…”

Her voice trails off as she flips it open.

For a moment, the entire world seems to go silent. The sound of commuters rushing by, the low hum of the air conditioner, Daniel’s quiet voice asking coaxing questions—all of it, for a moment, seems to stop.

It’s a British passport, well-stamped and well-traveled. The name reads DRIVER, HARVEY L. The picture, though—the picture—

“—okay?” A hand touches her arm, and she jumps about a mile into the air. It’s the policeman, and he looks worried. “Miss, are you okay?”

“I’m quite well, thank you,” Peggy says blankly, automatically.

She shrugs off his hand, turns on her heel, and walks back over to where Daniel and the maid are standing. Flips open the passport again and holds it up in front of the girl’s face. “Is this the man you saw?”

For a moment, they both just blink at her, and she realizes, belatedly, that she just interrupted Daniel mid-sentence. The girl glances at him, then at Peggy, and there’s something cautious, almost frightened about her expression. “Um, I think so? I mean, I’m pretty sure—”

“Be completely sure,” Peggy snaps. “Is it him?”

“Peggy,” Daniel says quietly, but the girl is peering at the photo again, and after a moment she nods decisively.

“It’s him. It’s definitely him.”

Peggy takes a deep breath, holds it for a second, and then lets it out. For a moment, she’s very sure that if she opens her mouth she’ll cry or scream or start laughing like a madwoman, but what comes out instead is a perfectly polite, “Thank you very much.”

“You’re… welcome?” the girl says, staring at her as though she’s grown a second head, and then Daniel is stepping forward, putting his hand on Peggy’s arm. She doesn’t shrug him off.

“Excuse me,” he says in a low voice to the maid. “Thank you, you’ve been a big help—if you could just go see that officer over there, he’ll finish taking your statement—”

His hand is firm on Peggy’s elbow, like an anchor.

“Oh, god,” she murmurs.

“Peggy,” Daniel says, low and urgent. “Peggy, what is it? Who is this guy? You know him?”

“Oh, god,” Peggy hears herself say again, and for a moment, hysterical laughter is very close. She presses her lips together, summoning every ounce of self-control she can muster. “Yes. Yes, I know him.”

She holds out the passport, and her hand is trembling so hard that she almost drops it. Daniel takes it from her and frowns down at the photograph without recognition. Somehow, that’s the strangest thing of all, but of course he _wouldn’t_ know. She’s never shown him a picture…

“Daniel, this is my brother. This is Michael.”

* * *

The hospital is quiet at night, eerily empty. Peggy is so tired that her vision is beginning to blur, so tired that it seems like every noise is coming from a long way away. She should go home and sleep, but she can’t. She sent Rose home hours ago, and she’s been sitting here ever since.

Michael won’t be coming back here. She’s nearly sure of that; he got what he came for.

That bloody damned M. Carter file. She’ll ask Jack when he wakes again, but that has to be it. _M. Carter._ She didn’t even think—

Of course she didn’t think. Michael was _dead_ long before any of the events in the file took place. Long dead. Years. They had a funeral. Mum still has a flag folded next to his picture on the mantle in their house in London.

That utter bastard.

Michael won’t becoming back, but if he does, she’s the one who ought to be here. The weight of her gun in her lap feels oddly foreign, almost horrible if she thinks about it, but she doesn’t set it aside. If he comes back, she won’t shoot him, but he’s not getting in that room.

The door at the end of the hallway swings open, then shuts with a loud _click_. Her head jerks up, heart pounding, the jolt of adrenaline stripping the fog from her thoughts, but it’s only Daniel. He makes his way slowly down the hallway, his limp more pronounced than usual, and settles on the chair next to her, leaning his crutch against the wall.

“You ought to be home in bed,” Peggy says.

A ghost of a smile flickers across his face. “Yeah, likewise.”

“I should be here if—” She shakes her head. “I should be here.”

“Somehow I thought you’d say that.” Daniel peers through the door, left slightly ajar on the darkened room. The blinds are drawn, but a thin strip of yellow light is visible under them, outlining Jack’s sleeping form. He’s snoring very faintly. “He wake up again?”

“Not yet.”

“What are you—” Daniel coughs, hesitates, then soldiers on. “What are you gonna tell him?”

“The truth,” Peggy says sharply.

Daniel holds his hands up, conciliatory. “Sorry.”

“No,” she says, and sighs. “No, I’m sorry. It’s a fair question. I’ve just had a—a very trying day.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.” He hesitates again, then says, all in a rush, “The boys in the lab were able to match fingerprints from the passport to the ones we found on Jack’s suitcase. He definitely took something. Probably that file, but we should talk to Jack when he wakes up, see if there’s anything else missing. I’m waiting to hear back from London, but you know, with the time difference…” He trails off, looks at his hands. “I’m sorry, Peggy. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.”

“Jack’s been shot. I’m not sure I’m the one you ought to be feeling sorry for.”

“I got enough to go around.”

“At any rate, I doubt he’s going back to England. I can’t imagine that assassinating the chief of the SSR is really MI6’s bailiwick.”

“You think he’s still working with British Intelligence?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. The Michael I knew would never have—” She presses her lips together, shakes her head. “At this juncture, your guess is as good as mine.”

Daniel nods. After a moment, he reaches for her hand, says quietly, “We’ll figure this out.”

Peggy nods, closes her eyes, and holds on.


End file.
